Authentic is harder for the big companies, Rep Management comes fist.

I recently asked via Twitter a distinguished looking Late Baby-Boomer running a successful B2B, 

"Do I smell prescheduled tweets?" After noticing his content was the same as the week before.
His EXACT answer was 20 min later and consisted entirely of "So what?"

So What?

Celebrities and Businesses alike are being slowly dragged into the today part of yesterday and being told to directly respond to fans and posts and tweets. Think TEAMS of SMM's are behind these responses? Just follow Lady Gaga, or Gwyneth Paltrow - or Tony Little! 

Content must be authentic, yes - Storytelling of flavor and above all - make your followers feel engaged. Feeling engaged, makes them more likely to engage your calls to action.

Wanna see the disaster prescheduling can cause your Brand Reputation? 

I'll let Scott Stratten from UNMarketing reveal a story so cringe-worthy, it's worth learning from, and remember: Social Media is REAL-TIME. So unless you're an enormous company, like Sprint 

(Even they have CSM Reps standing by 24/7 just in case. THAT post is coming soon.) Please reconsider your own personal ROI as being more than a game of "saved time", consider this: 

WORST SCHEDULED TWEET TIMING. EVER.

Posted On: ?
Posted In: Live Nation, radiohead, scheduled tweets
Comments: 120 Responses

Social media runs in real-time. Real-fast real-time. If you want to play in the pool, you better be in the pool for the entire party.

Brands/people etc have looked foolish in the past when they’ve scheduled auto-tweets that get sent at bad times during world events like disasters, elections and otherwise.

However, this one from 30 minutes ago takes the cake.

There was a RadioHead concert scheduled tonight in Toronto at Downsview Park. Tragedy struck, and some of the staging collapsed before the show, where at least one person died and many more injured. Obviously the news spread like wildfire:

Obviously a horrible tragedy that has occurred at too many events this year.

LiveNation, the promoter for the event also tweeted that the show has been cancelled, so people would not head to the venue.

The problem being a half-hour later they sent another tweet, this one obviously pre-scheduled to get people to tweet about the show!

And right away they were getting nailed on Twitter:

Everyone makes mistakes, including people behind brands. This type of one is preventable. Stop scheduling tweets. They aren’t 60,000 word books, it’s 140 characters. If you can’t take the time to type them (10 seconds) and be there when they send, don’t send them at all.

The problem is LiveNation wanted the benefit of people tweeting about a show in real-time, without actually being there in real time themselves. That tweet sat there for about 45 minutes before somebody took it down. That’s about 45 days in Internet time.

Our hearts here at UnMarketing go out to the family of the victim and those who were injured.

-Scott Stratton

Ours at Galahad Productions do as well.